Ankara: A trial in the US state of New Mexico will commence Wednesday to determine Facebook's liability in the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal following years of legal disputes.

According to Anadolu Agency, New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez stated that the data breach revealed misrepresentation about how user data was managed. He emphasized that the proceedings aim to hold Meta, Facebook's parent company, accountable for violating the trust of both New Mexicans and global users.

The trial in New Mexico's First Judicial District Court is anticipated to last four weeks. The state plans to present evidence including testimony from corporate propaganda experts and video depositions from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg, who is accused of being involved in monetizing user data.

The lawsuit, initially filed in 2021, claims that Facebook breached the Unfair Practices Act, a state law safeguarding consumers from deceptive business practices. New Mexico contends that users were misled about privacy protections during the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which involved unauthorized data harvesting for political advertising during the 2016 US presidential election and Brexit referendum.

New Mexico seeks injunctive relief to prevent future privacy violations and aims for maximum civil penalties under the Unfair Practices Act for each violation, arguing that 350,000 New Mexicans were affected.

The litigation follows Meta's recent $18 billion settlement with 47 US states over allegations related to platform designs targeting young users.